Letter: Mark Tully: the BBC will regret the loss of its 'old dinosaur'

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THE WHITE Paper on the future of the BBC is good news for the BBC but is it good news for radio listeners?

The White Paper says the licence fee will remain the BBC's principle source of income for the next five years but after that 'it might become possible to transfer all or some of the BBC's services to a subscription system'.

The costs of administering a subscription system are far higher than collecting a licence fee but, more important for radio listeners, subscription television will provide no funding for BBC Radio, which currently gets 25 per cent of the licence fee income.